The root that screams
According to a legend found in Renaissance herbals, mandrake grows beneath the gallows. When it is pulled up it gives such a scream that anyone who hears it dies. So the gatherer stopped his ears with wool, tied the plant by a rope to a dog’s neck and called the dog; the dog that pulled the plant out died. Shakespeare too writes in Romeo and Juliet of “shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth”.
Source: Jürgen Leo Müller, “Love potions and the ointment of witches: historical aspects of the nightshade alkaloids”, Journal of Toxicology: Clinical Toxicology 36(6), 1998 (Müller, Clin Toxicol, 1998). This is a folk record, not a treatment recommendation.
The root that screams when pulled